"Look at all those stars...."

"Look at all those stars..." On the soft grass I lay, my legs and arms stretched out comfortable, my body resting on the slightly damp carpet underneath. It took some time to finally find a dark, dark place. But once I did, I plopped my bike and body on the ground and gazed up.

Tonight, Perseids reaches its climax... 30 or more meteors per hour, they say. I gazed up, at the almost pitch black sky, at the stars.

"Look, out there. This is what I study..." Space, so vast, so mysterious, so mesmerising and so unknown to us all. I felt so small, like an insignificant little being not worthy of notice, yet with my little brain, with my puny mind trying to fathom it all. "So beautiful..." And every reason why it should be preserved, and why I've been spending hours and hours digging through documents trying to find the reasons why it must be preserved...

"So romantic..." I said, quietly. The stars gazed back. They seemed to twinkle at me, and I twinkled back. With my palm reaching for the skies, I gently waved. The wind seemed to kiss my cheeks, and crickets answer my words.

It's been a long time since I felt so relaxed, so calm, so not alone. Clouds slowly crept and soon tried to cover up the black, beautiful face of space. But the stars stared back, bright and unflinching, as they must have done for aeons and aeons before I was born, before there was even the idea of humankind...

"Thank you for being with me..." Under the dark, dark cover of the open sky, I was not alone.